In brief: Rescuers pull 29 from coal mine

BEIJING – All 29 miners trapped in a flooded Chinese coal mine were lifted to safety today, ending a daylong rescue drama, state media reported.

The miners were trapped Sunday morning after the small Batian mine in southwest China’s Sichuan province suddenly flooded.

The official Xinhua News Agency said Batian had stopped production and was being upgraded to increase its annual capacity from 50,000 tons to 60,000 tons. The workers had been underground for safety work, it said.

China depends on coal for 70 percent of its energy production, and its mines are the deadliest in the world, with more than 2,600 people killed in coal mine accidents in 2009 alone.

U.S. boy protests for park in DMZ

BEIJING – A 13-year-old American boy campaigning to turn the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea into a peace park tried to get the Chinese president’s attention today, staging a brief protest near Tiananmen Square before being led away by police.

Jonathan Lee, of Ridgeland, Miss., unfurled a sign saying “peace treaty” and “nuclear free DMZ children’s peace forest” as he stood outside the Tiananmen, or the Gate of Heavenly Peace, in central Beijing.

Less than a minute later, a man presumed to be a plainclothes police officer grabbed Lee’s sign and waved away watching journalists, who had been contacted by Lee’s family ahead of time. Three or four uniformed police officers then hurriedly escorted Lee and his mother away without commotion.